They Said, Find Someone Who Understands
by wowsugarpuss
Summary: When she returns from the hospital everyone treats Joan as especially breakable.


She thinks that it could be perfectly natural to feel this sad after spending so long in one room, that she could be experiencing some kind of side effect from the drugs that are still a little in her system. She tells herself that there is nothing to worry about and when her course of medication is finished she will stop seeing him. But she doesn't believe it. She doesn't believe in anything anymore. Joan does not believe in God because then Adam would think she was crazy and she could not deal with that. She thinks that in an adolescent way she loves him, just a little. She does not want the boy she loves to spend his days pretending with her and telling her things that she wants to hear just to stop from hurting her. She wants him to be real.

Joan wants her life to be real, but she cannot distinguish between the fact and the fantasy, if there ever was any fact. She will never know she will always be sick. And she hates it. She hates the not knowing, because knowing is all that any teenager really strives for, to know and understand.

When she puts her socks on in the morning and the soft cotton brushes over her toes Joan thinks about the extra fabric softener that her mother adds to the wash whenever any of her clothes are in.

She realizes slowly that Grace is less caustic around her than she used to be, that Luke insults her less and Kevin never play fights anymore. Her father was always over protective of her, so nothing has changed there but the one place that she notices herself being wrapped up in cotton wool the most is when Adam refuses to touch her. Never out loud, and never to her face, but inside his head she knows he has made a decision to touch her less, so she won't wear out.

Joan touches him more, but it's not the same.

She wants to feel ordinary, and yet she keeps talking to God because he appears to be the only one capable of treating her like a person who is not made of crystal. Joan has never been made of crystal, she is elastic that snaps back from incidents and she cannot understand why her family, her friends refuse to believe that she will be okay. Right now she's not okay, but she will be and she wishes that they would let themselves see that.

Conversing with God would not be the downfall of Joan Girardi. She refused to allow it.

She just had to prove that to the rest of the world who assumed that Lyme disease had taken its toll on her. So Joan did not listen to the sad songs when her radio came on, and made sure that she was never visibly ill. More ill. She smiled a lot and wished that they could see.

She sang the sad songs in her head.

Nobody had an excuse to treat her like glass, and yet they did. If Joan was not trying so hard to avoid it she would cry.

Joan tries very hard not to shout at strangers in the street. Especially when they really are the deity that she will not let herself believe in. Her mother thinks that she has no faith, she could be right, and decided that Joan should start going to church again. That they should all go to church because maybe that would help them find their way through these obstacles. Joan does not go.

She thinks that if seeing God started this mess then going to His place of worship probably isn't going to fix it. She thinks a lot more now and speaks less. She doesn't have the conviction to speak because she believes in so little, why converse about something that you don't believe in? But she believes in Adam. And that is something.

She believes in the good her family are trying to do, sentiments that are echoed by her friends, however unwanted they may be. Joan believes in them because she cannot believe in God. That would be absurd.

And absurd is just another word for not ordinary. And Joan likes ordinary. So do her parents. Her dad likes ordinary.

Joan tells herself that it is perfectly normal to feel like this after having such an ordeal. She tells herself that it is okay to feel so lonely, even though she is surrounded by people every minute of the day. Making sure she is okay, she is ordinary. And she tells herself that the paperboy is just a side effect of her medication. The priest and the old lady in the park and the bus driver and the shop clerk and. She divides her life down into parts and wishes them away on her medication, until there is nothing left to be ordinary.

And she tries not to question her disbelief, but when He talks to her Joan finds herself listening and when He asks she finds herself following His requests.

But she does not believe in Him, because then the people that she loves would start bathing her in fabric softener, trying to baptize her into the ordinary.


End file.
